The Rug
Duration: 10:36
“One of the most exquisite stories ever written, by anyone…”
Ellis Ni Dhuibhne, The Irish Times
The Rug is an adaptation of the short story by the Irish writer, Edna O’Brien, with voice over by the legendary Irish actress Anna Manahan. It is a story of loss told through the daughter looking back on her mother’s life in rural Ireland who receives a package one day from the postman. The look and feel of it come from paintings by the Fauvists who created orgies of color to project a mood yet not being true to the natural world. The composer, Michael Riesman, took inspiration from the folk tales of Stravinsky. Its skillful development of narrative evokes the character of a woman and a way of life.
A Film by
Maureen Selwood
The Rug
by Edna O’Brien
Voiceover
Anna Manahan
Composer
Michael Riesman
Odalisque
Duration: 11:36
Several women animators connect their work to the history of art in ways that allow them to reconstitute woman’s place—no longer the object of male desire, but as the controlling subject. Maureen Selwood‘s Odalisque is, perhaps, the best example.
Lauren Rabinowitz, The Art of the Animated Image, An Anthology
Made with the aid of romance and adventure—as a cafe artist and an opera singer—in these dreams, Selwood deflates as male fantasies the romantic conventions usually associated with these constructs. In each sequence, she escapes conventional confines that would relegate women to passivity or death and flows back to her living room, her visually nurturant world. Selwood calls attention to a more naturalistic figuration as the basis for a realism regarding women in Western art. Two styles are juxtaposed in a jarring fashion, fluid, graceful motion associated with the feminine against the disintegration and evaporation of form associated with the cartoon world using drawn animation with graphite and colored pencil.
A Film by
Maureen Selwood
Composer
Michael Riesman